How to control forum spam?

[Ellen C. Braun]

Hi Lori (and everyone else!)

I'm spending way too much time deleting HIDEOUS forum spam on my parenting forum- www.raisingsmallsouls.com/forums/

It seems like bots are posting x-rated stuff, and my members are (Understandably!) offended!

There must be some kind of program or hack that will deter these bots- I will be glad to hire anyone who can install something like this to help me out!

Thanks!!!

Ellen

[promotees]

There must be some kind of program or hack that will deter these bots- I will be glad to hire anyone who can install something like this to help me out!

Hi Ellen,

I have 3 suggestions for you;

1.)
Does your forum script offer a way to "moderate" new members?

I have a forum i moderator for candy wrapping and i have it set that "new members" that join be moderated. Once they post something and i have "reviewed the message" I can tell if it's a real person or "spam". Spam i delete and the real member I approve their message and then take them off of moderation. I then put the spam id on ban so it cant post again.

It has keep spam/**** off the boards and members happy. It's not too time consuming.

2.)
I have a guestbook that is getting "hit periodically" with spam, **** msgs. Since it's a guestbook I can't expect "people to sign up" before they will post so i had to come up with something else.

What i did was put some code at the top of the signup page to check the "IP" address of a visitor. If it's a known spammer then it displays a page that says "Site Down".

The only problem with this method is that they have to "post first" so that you can get their ip address. You then have to open the signup page and add that ipaddress to the others.

This helps for a few months then they are back again using a "different" ip address so you will 'Periodically' have to keep add ip addresses.

I looked at your forum and it is written in php (the same code) my guestbook is written in. Here's the code i used.

http://www.promotees.com/samples/siteblockcode.txt

You need to put it at the top of the page that handles posting.

3.)
Another option is that you can "password protect" the forum or the page that they post on. That means before anyone gets to the forum they first have to login. It consist of you basically password protecting your directory where the forum is. People will get a screen like this when they want to post;

http://www.promotees.com/samples/passwordsample.jpg

You can then put the user id & password as a "image" where "real members can read it but "spam bots" can't read it became it's not text" it's an image. I do this all the time with my email addresses to keep spammers from coming to my pages and reading email address. So this is an example of what i do with my email addresses;

http://www.pcbbkits.com/ipnmonitor/images/getinfo_email.gif

Of the 3 suggestions i think your easiest, less work intensive after it is in put into effect is the 3rd suggestion.

[Audrey]

Angela,

Wow, thank you so much for posting this. I'm sure it will help many.

[Lori]

Thanks Angela - great advice. I like #1 and may actually try that. I'm just nervous that I won't get to the moderating of new posts quickly enough. :roll:

Hi Ellen :)
One thing that made a big difference for me with vbulletin was requiring that they click a link in an email they receive after registering before they can post.

If you haven't done that yet go to your admin > vbulletin options > User Registration Options

Scroll down to where it says:

Verify Email address in Registration
If you set this option to 'Yes' new members will not be allowed to post messages until they visit a link that is sent to them in an email when they sign up.
If a user's account is not activated by the user visiting the link, it will remain in the 'Users Awaiting Activation' usergroup.

Check this as yes.

Hope that helps! You could also get so lucky as to have an awesome moderator like Audrey to help you out :D But don't take her! :lovey:

Lori

[promotees]

Angela,

Wow, thank you so much for posting this. I'm sure it will help many.

Hi Audrey,

I was kinda worrying thinking what could i contribute here and then this question came up. I truly hope it does help someone.

[promotees]

Thanks Angela - great advice. I like #1 and may actually try that. I'm just nervous that I won't get to the moderating of new posts quickly enough. :roll:

Hi Lori,

I just want to clarify my post for those that may be considering it...

I'm not talking ALL "new posts". Post from existing members go through as usual as they are already known to be legitimate. I'm talking about "new members that join" the board.

What happens is that "a new member signs up" and then if they post that 1st message has to wait until i approve it. We dont get that many new members per day. I get an email alerting me of a post waiting and I or a back up moderator approves/denys it.

The spam never gets seen on the board and new members are not affected.

I agree if i had to look through "every new post" that would be time consuming.

[Audrey]

Angela,

I would take your post, turn it into an article and get it submitted!!!